A War of Shadows

SIXTEEN

Jake Edelman checked the funny-looking greenish box that was now attached to his phone. It was a little larger than a cigar box. A three-pronged plug connected it to a nearby wall outlet, but the only sign of power was a dully-glowing red LED in the middle of the box’s faceplate.

There was a recess in the top of the box containing a number of copper-clad conductors. From his pocket, Edelman removed what appeared to be a small pocket calculator with a series of copper bars on its back that corresponded to those in the recess atop the box. He placed it in the recess and pressed down, only to fume when it wouldn’t go in.

Cursing, he glanced at his watch to see that it was approaching midnight. This thing had to be working by then. Finally he admitted defeat and buzzed for his secretary, an older woman named Maxine Bloom who’d been with him over ten years. She smiled that infuriating smile, grasped the calculator, turned it upside down, and put it in the recess. It snapped into place with a satisfying series of clicks.

He glowered at her to cover his embarrassment, sighed, cleared his throat, and nodded to her.

“You might as well be here anyway, Maxine,” he said. “I can’t take any notes or written records on this and I’ll need a good backup memory.”

She nodded and took a chair to one side of his desk. It wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d been there or not, he knew. Maxine was the best spy any office ever had. He was just thankful she was on his side.

He looked at her. “You checked the bug detector?” he asked.

She nodded. “Used the hand-held one, too. You know the department’s computer missed two of them?” She didn’t seem at all surprised. “The only leak’s the phone, now—I guarantee it.”

He shook his head in satisfaction. “The phone and box were installed and checked by the best,” he said. “And then I uninstalled it and had Fred do a number on both. It’s clean.”

“Let’s have at it, then,” his secretary suggested.

He turned and stared carefully at the calculator. It really wasn’t one, of course; the numbers were more on the order of a touch-tone phone faceplate, with an additional two rows of symbols. He held his breath nervously as he punched the laborious thirty-two digit combination of numbers and symbols that would connect him with the party he wanted. One mistake and it would clear. Three mistakes and, on the third clear, it would short out.

Despite his nervousness, he didn’t make any mistakes.

He put it on the speakerphone turned to low volume, then set up an additional desktop debugger nearby that would let out a squeal if there were any last-minute attempts to eavesdrop. The debugger was the best there was; it was programmed to detect just about every known device except a person in the room or leaning against the door. He had other precautions against that old-fashioned kind of stuff. He was certain that if the device didn’t go off no one else would hear him except those to whom he was talking.

A decade of counterespionage work was behind that confidence.

It was amazing, the number of clicks and funny phone-like noises the thing went through. First, anything going through his phone would pass through the incrediby sophisticated scrambler circuits in the green box. Unless you knew the entry key, there was simply no way to decipher the oddball digital scramble that came out the other end. Quite a number of government phones all over the country did know the key, and at midnight had punched the proper codes into their decoder boxes and waited for the phone to ring. All of those locations were also carefully debugged, and most would listen, not talk.

Additionally, the decoder slightly altered the received signal. In fact, it could make the speaker sound like anybody the programmer determined. A number of isolated military units using similar devices had given gruff-voiced muscular male sergeants high-pitched, sexy, feminine voices to relieve the boredom.

Jake thought this one made him sound like Mickey Mouse.

Finally the clicks and whirs stopped, and, one by one, lines were connected. He watched a little LED readout on the “calculator” tell him the number of connections being made. It was hoping too much that all would get it, but all but three checked in. Those three would later let him know, circuitously, who they were and why.

He locked the talk bar on his voice amplifier down.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for all the time and trouble you have undergone at my instigation and your discomfort. What we are dealing with here, I believe, is something of such magnitude that such measures may, in fact, still be inadequate.

“Know, however, that all of you have undergone extensive mind-probes, so your headache is not a lonely one, nor connected to any one department. Those of you who underwent that ordeal should appreciate the fact that people like me, heading up this extraordinary organization, also underwent the same checks. In the process, we found twenty-six people—twenty-six!—who were, quite simply, on the wrong side. Two of these particularly amazed me, as they were people who had been with my department for years. I knew them personally, and would have trusted them with my life. This should be a warning to all of you. Trust no one, absolutely no one, unless you have personally cleared that person through our methods. And that means husbands, wives, children, you name it, as well as the partner who once saved your life.” He paused to let the words sink in, grumbling slightly that so stern a warning should be delivered in Mickey’s high-pitched tones.

“Now I will tell you what we are dealing with,” he continued. He began with a recap of the history of the Wilderness Organism, sparing little. “And so, you see, the fact that the basic blueprints, as it were, for the Wilderness Organism were in the NDCC computer bank means that the disease is of domestic, even government manufacture. The killing of Spiegelman in an absolutely secure place and the kidnapping of O’Connell and Bede from NDCC itself just after they made the same discovery shows just how pervasive all this is.”

He paused again for effect, about ready to drop the bomb. “Despite the use of those overage radicals and the tacit cooperation of some rather oddball Third World dictatorships, it is apparent that we are dealing with a plot that is basically domestic and reaches to the highest levels of government. CIA and FBI have striven in vain to find the source of the enemy, the brains behind it. We believe now that we have been looking too far afield, that this is a plot, carefully planned and prepared for years, perhaps decades, from within. There is a massive conspiracy here, and none of us is safe. We are currently under a state of quasi-military dictatorship, and this is hardening. Those within the government behind this plot can use this dictatorship, which is bureaucracy-supported, to do practically anything they wish, including kill me or you if we get in the way. There is only one way to wage a war against a shadow in your own house, and that is to create and deploy an organization as shadowy and tenuous as the enemy’s. That’s what you are, ladies and gentlemen. Soldiers in a war of shadows. Whichever side shines the bright light on the other first will win. We will use the computer data bank as our weapon, too. We will use the bureaucracy. And where a shadow is found, we will expose it to the glare of sunlight, extinguishing it. In three minutes this conversation will be automatically terminated; after that, you will be called by your own unit heads for instructions. Good luck and God bless you all.”

He sighed and tapped the bar, then looked over at Maxine, herself a veteran of the nasty mind-probing techniques used to gather this squad.

He sighed. “Well, there it is, Maxine. A pep talk to the troops. Somehow I never expected to be a general.”

She grinned. “Jake, you make a fine one, even if you do sound like a mouse. You going to brief the Bureau people personally?”

He shook his head negatively. “No, I’ll leave that to Bob. Give him forty minutes, then tell him I want to see him in here.” He sank in his padded chair, looking suddenly tired, worn out.

“How long has it been since you’ve had some sleep?” his secretary asked.

“Two, three days, I guess. I tried a few times, but I just can’t. The nightmares are too real.”

She understood. “Jake, we’re both Jewish. Our people have undergone every kind of horror known to history. We’ve always won in the end, Jake. Remember that.”

“But at such a cost!” He sighed. “Six million in the Holocaust, God knows how many in the Israeli wars—and before that, back to the diaspora. You know what we were in the Middle Ages, Maxine? Balebatishkeit. Property. Walled in at night, trotted out when convenient, to get around Christianity’s anti-usury laws or when they needed a scapegoat for something. For over fifteen hundred years, Maxine. This republic of ours has gone on for what? Two and a quarter centuries, more or less. A blink of the eye in history. And now—we have over two million people in concentration camps in the Southwest and Alaska, Maxine. Two million! And more coming as soon as they can build them. No trials, no questions. How many more are disappearing forever without anybody even knowing it? Gas controls so nobody can drive. Electricity controls, so nobody can ride. ID cards and lots of paperwork to take a plane or bus anyplace. A soldier on every street corner. How can we fight that? A totally controlled press. You remember Sonny Deiter, with the Post?”

She nodded.

“I saw him the other day. He told me that the big leaks on the Wilderness Organism story came from Her Highness Georgianne Meekins, the H W Queen herself.”

Maxine Bloom looked surprised. “You think she…?” The question trailed off.

He shrugged. “Who knows? Won’t get any more from Sonny, either. The government censor at the Post canned him when he tried to sneak a story about the camps past to the copy desk. He’s probably in one, now. Hell, Maxie, the American public doesn’t even know! As long as they get their steady diet of soap operas and shoot-’em-ups, mow their lawns if they have any, and read Schlock Confessions while listening to funk music they’re oblivious.”

“Call Nadine,” his secretary said. “Tell her you love her and all that. Then talk to Bob. After that, I’m going to get Maury Edwards up here to give you a sleep shot.”

“Now wait a minute!” he protested.

She was hearing none of it. “Jake, we’ll probably all be dead or in those camps before this is out,” she said ominously. “If we aren’t, it’ll be because of the passion you’ve shown here. We can’t afford to lose you, Jake. It’s my neck, too, you know. How’s the heart?”

He grimaced. “Okay, I guess. I feel so rotten it’s hard to tell.”

Maxine Bloom was one of a handful of people who knew that Edelman had had a triple bypass operation less than five years before. He was to have retired after that, but they needed him.

They all needed him now. He realized that, although the thought made him uncomfortable. So many lives, so many husbands, wives, children needed him, depended on him. He held their lives in his hand.

Maxine went out, and a little while later Bob Hartman came in. Thirtyish, prematurely balding, Jake had rescued him from the obscurity of an inspectorship in Butte, Montana where he’d been sent for nailing a ranking senator with over $138,000 in illegal payoff money. The senator had resigned, of course, and was convicted and sentenced to three years’ probation. They replaced him with another crook, and Hartman saw scenic Butte, where he’d considered quitting and taking a nice police job in a small town somewhere when Jake had tagged him. He was forever grateful to Jake, and intensely loyal to the little man.

“How’d it go?” the chief inspector asked his aide.

Hartman loosened his tie and threw his sports-jacket over the back of his chair. “Not bad. We have a pretty good selection of agents around the country, including here.”

“No word on O’Connell or Bede as yet?” Edelman asked.

The younger man shook his head from side to side. “Nothing. Hell, they’re probably dead. Even if they aren’t, it was pretty easy to bury somebody before, and a cinch now. If anything turns up, though, we’ll know it instantly.”

That satisfied the boss; there was little else he could expect. Edelman changed the subject.

“What about the old rad connection? Anything?” “None of the sleepers has surfaced, it that’s what you mean. Still, there’re rumblings. Something big is up, something not clear but absolutely strong. Best guess is they’re going to hit the cities—maybe one, maybe a lot, all at once.”

“When?” Jake Edelman leaned forward. “Nothing clear. Best guess is sometime during the week of September fifteenth.”

Edelman involuntarily glanced over at his desk calendar. It was August twenty-fifth now, as he well knew.

Three weeks. Three weeks to win the war of shadows, and he was still too much in the dark.